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Israel Shamir — shamireaders May 4, 2013

Americans can learn much from Israel. In Israel, you can write openly about one of the more interesting and important subjects of our era: Jewish wealth. For instance, the Israeli-American centrist think tankJewish People Policy Institute reported in 2010: “World Jewry today is at a historical zenith of absolute wealth creation.”

Forbes Israel, the Tel Aviv offshoot of the American business magazine, has a cover story on Jewish billionaires. The Israeli edition has made up a list, drawn from Forbes‘s overall ranking of the world’s 1,426 billionaires, of the 165 richest Jews inthe world.

“Per capita, Jews are a little over 100 times more likely to become billionaires than the rest of the human race.”

The billionaire on the cover is cosmetics heir RonaldLauder, president of the World Jewish Congress. His $3.6 billion makes him, according to Forbes Israel, the world’s 69th richest Jew. (By the way, Lauder has one of those rare New York City concealed-carry permits.)

In America, this just isn’t done in the mainstream media, even though it’s obvious and fairly easy to do.

Sure, Forbes has been publishing its rankings of rich people for three decades.

Moreover, counting by ethnicity is something that the government, corporations, and foundations have been doing assiduously since the late 1960s.

And these days, it’s easy to look up most well-known individuals’ ethnicity on the Internet. Wikipedia, for example, usually states the subject’s ancestry immediately after the table of contents. (That reflects a major change in our culture’s emphasis. At bedtime, I often browse in my 1971 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Biographical entries back then were quite reticent about ethnic backgrounds.)

You can use Google Translate to convert the Forbes Israel richest Jews ranking from Hebrew into awkward-but-adequate English. Thus, “165 billionaires [sic] Jews constitute 11% of global billionaires list, and common wealth reaches $812 billion,” or an average of $4.9 billion per Jewish billionaire.

Jews are usually said to comprise about 0.2% of the world’s population, so 11% of the world’s billionaires means they’re doing pretty well.

Here’s my count of Forbes Israel‘s list, with Jewish billionaires as a fraction of the country’s total number of billionaires:

Page’s conclusion brings up an obvious question: Who is a Jew? Generally, non-rabbinical Jewish organizations, such as Forbes Israel, tend to attribute Jewishness generously to individuals perceived as good guys, such as the popular Page. In turn, it’s common to quibble when the topic is anybody who isn’t popular. (Thus, you’ll often see it argued that, say, Einstein was obviously Jewish despite not being religious, while Trotsky can’t be considered Jewish because he was not religious.)

In the odd case of Page, we know that his mother came from a Zionist household and had moved to Israel, but the background of his father, the late computer-science professor Carl Victor Page, is obscure. A Google search reveals only that his paternal grandfather had been an autoworker and labor activist, and that his father despised religion.

The Page family seemed to have cherished an old-fashioned socialist belief that in the future, ancestry would no longer matter. Ironically, the wife of Page’s partner Brin,Anne Wojcicki, cofounded that quintessential 21st-century company 23andMe, which offers DNA testing for genealogy enthusiasts.

The true problem with Forbes Israel‘s list is neither ideological nor ethical. Instead, it’s a slapdash affair with poor quality control. Forbes Israel palpably undercounts the number of American Jews on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. (In 2012, it took a minimum net worth of $1.1 billion to make the 400, so everyone on the Forbes 400 is a billionaire, but a few hard-up billionaires with only $1.0 billion didn’t make the Forbes 400.)

To check which of the competing lists is more accurate, I’ve searched the first 21 names on which n/a and Forbes Israel disagree.

In one case, Forbes Israel categorizes as Jewish a man who appears to be a WASP, cable TV sultanAmos Barr Hostetter Jr., while n/a rightly classifies him as Northwestern European.

The other 20 disagreements consist of Forbes billionaires left off the Forbes Israel list that n/a denotes as Jewish.

I rapidly found that for 16 of those 20, n/a has a slam-dunk case based on readily accessible online evidence. For example, the Wikipedia article on former American Enterprise Institute chairman Bruce Kovner ($4.3 billion) states: “Kovner was born into a Russian Jewish family.…”

Two of the disputed 20, Orange County real-estate baron DonaldBren and Indianapolis Colts owner JamesIrsay, are the product of mixed marriages.

That leaves only two of n/a‘s 20 whom I couldn’t easily document: banker Bernard Saul II and Miami TV station owner EdmundAnsin. The first has a stereotypical Jewish name, while the second is a relatively rare name that has left me stumped. Ansin’s father is said to be an immigrant from Ukraine who opened a shoe factory in Worcester, MA.

In general, I found that n/a‘s accuracy is better by far.

Overall, n/a states that 140 of the Forbes 400 rankings of richest Americans, or 35 percent, are Jewish.

Perhaps that 35 percent figure is slightly overstated by fully counting individuals of mixed backgrounds, such as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Then again, n/a may be missing a roughly similar number of non-Jewish names of billionaires who are a half or a quarter Jewish in their mother’s lines, so it may all balance out.

In general, however, the question of how to count people of partial Jewish ancestry is, no matter how fascinating in theory, still difficult at present. The current denizens of the Forbes 400 (average age66) largely come from generations when mixed marriages were fairly rare, so solving this methodological issue can reasonably be deferred for a few more years.

Jews are usually said to make up about two percent of the US population and perhaps three percent of the older generation that dominates the Forbes 400. Therefore, Jews are roughly 17 times more likely per capita to make the Forbes 400 than is the rest of the American population.

This 35 percent Jewish figure has been fairly stable since n/a started his analyses in 2009. The first careful analysis of the Forbes 400 was performed byNathanielWeylback in 1987, when he found23 percent were Jewish. That suggests a sizable increase in Jewish representation among plutocrats over the last generation. Yet bear in mind that’s only one data point from the past. I’ve been casually following the Forbes 400 for 30 years, and membership shifts frequently due to various bubbles.

n/a has also done a quick and dirty look at Forbes‘s global list of 1,426 billionaires (#1, by the way, is Lebanese-Mexican CarlosSlim). Unlike Forbes Israel‘s estimate of 11 percent Jewish, n/a comes up with over17percent. Note that this is pretty much of aSWAG for Eastern Europe, where it’s harder for an Anglophone to look up biographical information. Still, this estimate would mean that per capita, Jews are a little over 100 times more likely to become billionaires than the rest of the human race.

In summary, as an Israeli might tell you, an informed opinion is better than an uninformed one.

Israel Shamir is a critically acclaimed and respected Russian Israeli writer. He has written extensively and translated Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Jaffa, is a Christian, and an outspoken critic of Israel and Zionism.